What to do if you want to start a business but you don’t want to go through the pain of starting one from scratch?
Beyond Starting from Scratch: Alternative Paths to Business Ownership
Following my last issue where I decided to break the mould in my writing and to see who out there had the same thinking and to my surprise I got a lot of positive feedback from consultants, entrepreneurs and investors who had been on that journey and realised they could buy boring businesses, add value to hold or sell, and business owners who told me that their plan was to sell in the next 5 - 10 years.
Buying/Adding value to businesses seems like such a wealth hack that is not spoken about as much, but it feels like in certain communities these discussions are the norm and more people that look and sound like me are realising it could be used as a vehicle to preserve their future or the future of their children.
If you’ve worked in a high salaried role and managed to have £100K lying in the bank, have suddenly been made redundant, what would you do? What could you buy that’s not a pub or a restaurant?
I’ve been hearing stories about Opticians, Dentists, Property Entrepreneurs, Laundromats & Cleaning businesses. Some of them I’m looking forward to getting into and I’m curious about how they get to recurring revenue from a small subset of clientele and their process to turn more customers into delighted clients based on their end to end process.
Still thinking through but my personal newsletter may switch slightly, and what better way to flip my digital skills & embark on tried and tested businesses that have been around for decades and reimagine what they could look like with a bit of tinkering. Is there a segment of business owners & skilled value creators who could strike deals which give more time to explore other things and an opportunity to add value to the ecosystem. Would that be a win/win?
I don’t know what I am doing (yet). Watch this space.
Photo Credit: @Idowu Oluwaseun
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A pathway to healing sudden bereavement and grief through Mindfulness Art. Link
Thoughts & News I wanted to share with you
Jeremy Harbour (called UK’s Codie Sanchez - thanks CJ) speaks about having a strategy before you find businesses & using marketing/sales skills to find them. Link (learnt a recent saying, acquisition shouldn’t dictate your strategy, your strategy should dictate your acquisition)
Great episode by Tej Talks (property entrepreneur who purchased 9 houses in 15 months) who speaks to Dee Ludlow (SME Investor who recently started a Fund) about using property as a stepping stone and led to his ventures where he could own more cash flowing assets that he could have an active role. Link
Apparently Adam Neumann wants to buy WeWork out of bankruptcy. Link
JD, the Chinese e-commerce platform, is considering a ~$1bn bid for Curry’s, the ‘last man standing’ in physical retail of electronics in the UK. Link
Checkout this online broker for finding dental practices for sales. Link
Vice to lay off hundreds of staffers, stop publishing content on its website. Link
Share with anyone who buys or sells businesses or is looking to
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